What's New (10/25)

Our Seminar

• This week, Ayu, Gami and myself facilitated an English Department Open House for high school students interested in our university. The public relations committee had asked us to do a "mock lesson" for the students and it was a success! From this experience, I had an epiphany about how I could make group work actually work next time I am called on to teach a demonstration class at a junior high school.
• Gami wrote about her experience teaching at a cram school. Do you think her experience working at a cram school is typical?
• Bonsai, YuS, and Hope have finished their 2 weeks of teacher training at junior high schools and have rejoined the seminar!Bonsai has started distributing a questionnaire she made for ALTs working in elementary schools. Sometime this week, she will write about what she hopes to learn from this questionnaire and what she thinks the results will be. YuS is putting the finishing touches on a questionnaire asking recent high school graduates to reflect on their six years of learning English in junior and senior high school. This week Yu will also write about what he hopes to learn from the questionnaire and what he thinks the results will be. Today, Hope and I are going to meet and see how she is progressing with her paper "The Future of English Education in Japan."
• Eri, Ayu, and Cube have been a little quiet lately. I hope that we can hear from them soon.

Colleagues

• AJ Hoge's situation at the university has had some unfortunate developments, details are here. AJ is now in Japan and already has some new students! He was interviewed by students in Aaron Campbell's class. The interview is here.
• Marco Polo after reading the blogs of AJ, Aaron, and myself has theorized why teaching at institutions is difficult for teachers who care about their students' learning. What do you think about what he has to say?

Blogs from Other Classes

• I have looked at the blogs of students from Rosa's ESL class in Australia. The students are from a variety of countries and talk about their home countries; pretty interesting stuff!

Well, tomorrow, I have to give two 3-hour workshops to jr. and sr. high school English teachers about teaching reading. I am now going to prepare. Have a nice week! Adios!